Kadri Gopalnath, RIP

I mostly know of him by way of this great album with Rudresh Mahanthappa. Jazz fusion that really works, and a new way to hear the sax.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 91

This song gives me goosebumps every time and really is just about perfect in every possible way. A fantastic performance to boot. Is the botox lady just projecting?

Autumn color in Foothills Park

Oh, it's no Vermont, you say? True enough. We learn to appreciate dusty shades of sage and ochre here, punctuated by the occasional fallen madrone berry or poison oak leaf. Thankful that our subtly beautiful hills are not (yet) burning.

Jordan Casteel at the Cantor Museum

A good way to get out of the smoke for a while if you live anywhere near Stanford is to check out the Cantor's exhibition, Jordan Casteel: Returning the Gaze. Casteel's large-scale portraits pay homage to fauvism but definitely show you something new. Yes, the eyes return the gaze– but there's plenty to look at in the hands, feet, and teeshirts of her subjects, too.

Elijah (detail)

Black Wings

Black Wings Has My Angel
Elliott Chaze

A very fine wild ride of a noir thriller from 1953. It offers up all the hard-boiled prose you could possibly want, rarely if ever veering into the lane of self-parody. The protagonists are made for each other, and their love affair is as warm as it is hot. Can they get away with the perfect crime? Even if they don't, you can believe they would do it all again in a heartbeat. Not entirely immune to some of the stereotypes of its time and genre, Black Wings Has My Angel nonetheless gives us a femme fatale who is every bit the equal of our conniving and complex narrator, as well as pitch-perfect satire of suburban domesticity and convention. And every page is a pleasure to read...

I took her handbag from her lap, flipped the tortoise shell latch, and removed her shiny little automatic, the toy I'd given her the night we came home from Mamie's. The gun looked like one of those things at the carnival where you throw hoops and try to win it. It was no longer than my hand and didn't look as if it would kill a flea. That was very funny, as you will see. I thumbed the release of the clip and checked her ammunition, little baby-bullets with coppery noses like costume jewelry. I replaced the full clip and jerked the chromed jacket back to full-cock position, pleased that it slid nicely, pumping a cartridge into the chamber when I let it go. "You ever shoot one of these, baby?" 

"No," she said, "but it must be just like pointing your finger." 

"That's right, they say that's why in the newspaper when you read about a housewife shooting her man, he generally stays shot. Women don't complicate shooting with a lot of stylized foolishness. The average housewife has had plenty of practice pointing her finger at her old man when he comes home late nights. Then when she gets really sore at him and points a gun instead of a finger it hits him where it hurts." 

"I'm no housewife."  

"No, but you've got some of the symptoms." 

Ethan Frome

I finally read Edith Wharton's little masterpiece. The writing is brilliant, as one would expect– economical but still palpably descriptive of both inner and outer experience. The story is utterly compelling, right down to the nasty plot twist ending. Biting humor affords the reader a nervous chuckle now and then. But I can't think of another book in which the author is so cruel to her protagonist. Why must Ethan be consigned to hell on earth? Is he being punished for being a naive dreamer? For his self-sacrifice for the sake of moral duty? For lusting in his heart? Just for being poor? I guess if God did it to Job...

Baylands geometry

How to appeal to the future of the Democratic Party... not...

"Anxious Democratic Establishment Asks, ‘Is There Anybody Else?’ Party leaders who are fatalistic about Democrats’ chances in 2020 are musing about possible late entrants to the race. Sherrod Brown? Michelle Obama?" So reads the head of this NYT article, but when you scroll down, much of the talk is actually about Hillary or Bloomberg jumping in, or being conscripted by... who, you ask? Those out-of-touch party elites and Wall Streeters? Nah...

Your Second FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

Bohemian miners (coal loaders) unemployed since mechanization of mines. Jere, West Virginia. They live together in one house with a woman housekeeper. All on relief. Spend most of their time fighting about politics. Call their dog "Hitler" because he's so mean and nasty. To the left is an outdoor oven for baking bread. Abandoned mining town.
Marion Post Wolcott, 1938

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

Unemployed miner. Herrin, Illinois
Arthur Rothstein, 1939.

35 Soul Classics 1970-1975

Is there ever a time when you would not want to listen to any one of these songs? On Spotify.

Little things

I took this blurry close-up of a valley oak leaf with my phone the other day in Arastradero Preserve... the little red pimple- or volcano-shaped galls caught my eye, although they knocked off so easily I wonder if they were not some kind of scale insect. At any rate, I missed the handsome jumping spider entirely, until I cropped the picture...

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 90

While I was spluttering through my mile at the pool today, one of the lifeguards was playing a pretty good playlist, including some Sly... though not this song, which is among his best. So many great lyrics, including my two favorite verses: "Stand! You've been sitting much too long– there's a permanent crease in your right-and-wrong" and "Stand! Don't you know that you are free? Well at least in your mind, if you want to be..." A sarcastic dig at the Beatles? Then the funky denouement...

Meanwhile the SF Jazz Collective this season is covering Stand! along with Miles's In a Silent Way on the occasion of both albums' 50th anniversaries. I hope they capture the wild funky spirit of both...

Where were you and what were you doing during the earthquake?

On the 30th anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake, KQED wants to know. I have a weak memory, but I do remember that moment. I was in my office in Kenna Hall at Santa Clara University. The shaking was scary, but the loud steel-on-steel roar that the building made was even scarier. "Freight train over railroad trestle" seems about right. But then it subsided, and I decided to drive home... carefully. That was eery. Most people seemed to be hunkered down– not a lot of traffic. The most vivid image was of a cannery on my way home– there were still some canneries even then– with a buckled wall and a huge stack of empty cans spilling out. That's when it hit me that there was some serious damage.

Laura was in Colorado on business, pregnant with Aidan. Of course we couldn't get in touch right away, and the news outside the Bay Area sensationalized to the point where she might have thought it was Nagasaki. But I was OK, and so were most folks. Are we ready for the next big one? I doubt it.

We laugh, because... what's the alternative?

“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).”

This represents some hubris... I really don't think he has totally destroyed and obliterated our economy yet! But give him time...

"Self-defeat" seems like the right term

Once upon a time in America, prosperous rural towns helped lead the revolution in public education and local public goods such as libraries. As the story goes, the United States became a leader in economic growth by way of human capital accumulation because political power was democratic and decentralized; many communities viewed investments in local public goods as a way they could collectively better themselves, and they had the authority and will to collect the necessary tax revenue and make it happen. The eclipse of this collective optimism by selfish pessimism is a tragedy being played out in our country's heartland, as Monica Potts reports in this sad but excellent piece. When and how did this reversal of outlook come about? Then again, as a friend put it, the news is "hopeful too, because as [the] author points out, the number of people with these 'lifestyles' is dwindling...."

The driver is part of the death machine

I found it interesting that in an op-ed entitled "Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That." one can search for the word "alcohol" and get zero hits. "Drunk" gets one, in a photo caption. The CDC estimates that alcohol-impaired crashes account for nearly 30% of traffic fatalities. One could add to that fatalities caused by drowsy or distracted drivers and come up with quite a few unnecessary deaths that could logically be prevented by always alert and sober computer drivers. That seems like a significant improvement over the status quo, if and when it happens.

Gene Ammons...

... did not make it to 50 years old, and about ten years of his short life were spent behind bars for narcotics possession. The rest were spent making fantastic music.